for the address “—maybe you guys can help me out. Do you know where this is? Shady Isle?”
They scrutinize the letter. “Well sure. All you gotta do is keep right on following this road here past the Casino. About a third of a mile down you’re gonna see a steep driveway on your left—just follow that right on up to the top. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks guys. Well, I guess we better head off before it gets dark. Nice machine.”
As he turns away, the man says, “You ever ride one?”
Henry hesitates. “What, one of these? Not really.”
“Come on, did you or didn’t you?”
“Just once, years ago, at Pismo Beach. But it was a three-wheeler.”
“Well hey,” the driver says, climbing off, “give ’er a spin.”
Henry tries to make light: “Oh, yeah. That’d be good.”
“Why not? Go ahead.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Sure you could. Why the hell not?”
“I’d probably wreck it or something.”
“Wreck it? You’re not gonna wreck it—a ten-year-old could handle this. Trust me, this mother’s been through a lot worse than anything you might do. Nothing you can do to wreck it. Come on.”
“Thanks anyway—I better not.”
“Come on, man, try it out. Just once around the square. What’s the big deal?”
Henry wavers before the force of the man’s insistence—there is something challenging about it, almost hostile: Let’s embarrass the stupid tourist. To them he must appear so useless and soft, but there was a time not so long ago when Henry would have jumped at the chance to show off. Before the car accident. Before his daughter was born. But now he pictures himself putt-putting around like an overcautious idiot, or the opposite: turning a little too fast and flipping the thing over, ending this trip with a broken back, paralyzed for life.
“No, thanks—the wife would kill me. Besides, we really have to go. Thanks anyway, though.” He waves and gets away.
“What was that all about?” Ruby asks.
“Just shooting the bull,” he says, feeling them still watching, like a drill in the back of his skull. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Seven
BIG GAME
They walk past the Casino and down along the shore, the steep mountainside rising on their left. The place has the feeling of being beyond the tourist itinerary; there is little to see here, and no one to see it. The sidewalk peters out to a gravel path overhung with rustling eucalyptus trees. The thin, rocky beach is unkempt and littered with leaves. No one would ever come here to swim.
It’s getting hard to push the stroller, but just as they begin to think about turning back, they come to the end of the road. The only way remaining is a cleared trail up the hill, barred with a sign that reads, PRIVATE PROPERTY—TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
“That can’t be it,” Henry says.
“It has to be, it’s all there is,” says Ruby. “Look, I can see it up there.”
She’s right. Above them, visible through the tree branches, Henry can make out a ledge of snow-white concrete jutting from the brushy cliff.
“Give me a break—this can’t be the only way up there.”
“It must just be the beach path.”
“This is ridiculous.”
Henry and Ruby pick up the stroller with practiced ease, carrying it between them like a litter as Moxie sleeps within, oblivious. Priding themselves on being active people, they have a system for everything and are used to doing this on stairs, escalators and other urban obstacles—it’s become almost automatic.
The pathway is hard-packed sand under a mulch of bark and curly brown eucalyptus leaves, cut through here and there with dry flood channels revealing veins of stones. It climbs steeply uphill, veering around rock faces and deadfalls. They lose sight of the ocean. On either side, the slope is all thick desert scrub—not the attractive sword plants and palm trees planted around Avalon, but prickly native brambles and tumbleweeds that remind Henry of the scraggly hills around Hollywood, or maybe Kabul.
The deeper in they go, the more they are losing the light, and the warmth. Late-afternoon shadows and sea mist are enveloping the trail like a rising tide. These September nights are turning chilly.
Oddly enough, the sky is still blue above the trees, the clouds foiled with gorgeous sunset colors. On the opposite side of the island it must still be bright and sunny. Unfortunately, they are on the shady side, looking up at daylight as if from a dark hollow. The light is an inducement to keep climbing.
“We must be almost there,” Henry says, becoming winded.
“Yeah, this is a little bit more of a hike than